I think that one thing I will argue in the debate is the nature of the question. Privacy and surveillance are not mutually exclusive and saying that giving the government the tools necessary to keep our country safe necessarily means that people’s privacy is violated. The question itself leads the reader of it to an immediate answer which is unfair to the debate. It could just as easily be written as”Is it worth it to give up one’s personal privacy for the greater good of National Security?” This asks the same question but with the bias leaning the other way. The Patriot Act also will help the government track more lone wolf type attacks where without metadata it would be very hard to track them. In a New York Times article, it gives a specific example of a terrorist who was caught solely because of the way the patriot act is designed to catch these people. Based on the Patriot Act it is also illegal for the government to eavesdrop unless a judge warrants it. This is different than data collection, and I will try and argue this distinction in the class debate. I also think that there is the pretty obvious argument that if one life is saved because of this data collection that it is still worth it to do so given the risks/lack of privacy.